In ad hoc networks, devices have to cooperate in order to
compensate for the absence of infrastructure. Yet, autonomous
devices tend to abstain from cooperation in order to save their
own resources.
Incentive schemes have been proposed as a means of fostering
cooperation under these circumstances. In order to work
effectively, incentive schemes need to be carefully tailored to
the characteristics of the cooperation protocol they should
support. This is a complex and demanding task. However, up to
now, engineers are given virtually no help in designing an
incentive scheme. Even worse, there exists no systematic
investigation into which characteristics should be taken into
account and what they imply. Therefore, in this paper, we
propose a systematic approach for the engineering of incentive
schemes. The suggested procedure comprises the analysis and
adjustment of the cooperation protocol, the choice of
appropriate incentives for cooperation, and guidelines for the
evaluation of the incentive scheme. Finally, we show how the
proposed procedure is successfully applied to a service
discovery overlay.